Chapter 80 Qin Xin Hong Butterfly, Memory, Reader
"Although she seems to be good friends with the leader, it is, after all, a prayer of a new evil god... Can Sister Hong recite it?"
Within the space where the redwood church was located, Gu Yinglan, seeing that Cat Beard and his group had many people, directly assigned them a small house with a yard. Although the house was a bit old, everyone was used to sleeping outdoors and adapted well to everything except for the lack of internet.
This space appears to be a relic from before the Great Cataclysm. After settling in, Wenren Qiu excitedly went out to investigate. The leader, whose powers were overloaded, was still resting in bed. Cai Chunyu, who was used to cleaning up the leader's messes, went out to survey the surrounding terrain. Only Aliya, who was cleaning her gun in the yard, responded to Shen Xijing's rambling.
"Maybe."
Knowing Aliya's personality, Shen Xijing didn't chat much. She lay on the stone table in the middle of the courtyard and idly clicked on the strange forum called "Listening Lord's Believers Management Center"—this was the only modern form of entertainment in this safe but strange space.
She couldn't see the exact number of users on the forum, but judging from the number of posts in the chat section (less than fifty), she knew that the forum didn't have many users, but there were a few active IDs who could reply and chat when they were bored.
Several recent forum posts have been about the assassination attempt. After the mission ended and the group chat was disbanded, they decided to do a post-battle debriefing with the [Twins] team on the forum, which attracted a follower with the ID [Miss is the best in the world] to watch.
【(Administrator) Miss is the best in the world】: "Then, tell me in detail how Bian Shaoyan died."
【(Twin) Man】: "Hey, could you describe it in more detail, OP? Did he die a horrible death? How many times did Bishop D stab him? Did he repent before he died?"
Although the quantum computer can now be used to type with thoughts, Shen Xijing is used to the old version of the quantum computer and prefers to bring up the light screen keyboard unless it is an emergency. She looked at the text on the light screen and her typing fingers paused slightly.
She thought her pirate crew already hated Bian Shaoyan enough, but she never expected to meet someone who hated him so much... Hmph, scum, he deserves to die!
Shen Xijing thought bitterly, her fingers twitching as she racked her brains to describe Bian Shaoyan's death in eight hundred words, when a strange ID suddenly popped up:
[(Tourist) Call Me Sister Hong]: "Was Bian Shaoyan really killed by your pirate crew? Where are you now? Are you safe? Do you need any medicine?"
Shen Xijing looked at the string of question marks, blinked, and then suddenly jumped up, holding her personal terminal, ready to rush into the house. However, she stopped abruptly when she saw the new rumor in the post, her upper body suddenly halting in mid-air.
Aliya silently watched Shen Xijing's actions, paused in wiping her gun, and then used her mental power to open her personal terminal. She quickly found the reason for Shen Xijing's shock in the latest post:
[Cat Whisker Pirates]: "Hmm."
【Cat Whiskers Pirate Crew】: "Little Red, let's chat privately."
Although this strange forum allows believers in different places to communicate without a network signal, it is still a forum and does not have a private chat function. However, after being immersed in the information age for so long, everyone naturally found a solution quickly.
Shen Xijing and Aliya simultaneously exited the chat area and opened the mission area. After confirming that they had joined the team, a new category called "team" appeared under the "mission" and "redeem" columns on the left side of the mission area.
Clicking in, the two indeed saw Qin Xinhong's post in the chat area:
【(Cat Whiskers Pirate Crew) Call Me Sister Red】: "Is this the place? This feature is quite fancy."
In a remote, abandoned factory, Qin Xinhong watched as Cat Whiskers pulled her into the "team." She couldn't help but look around. She was now sitting cross-legged on a machine tool, surrounded by various props that were supposed to reduce pollution and protect the mind. Her eyes held a subtle expression.
She was prepared to face the spiritual corruption of the evil god and even degenerate into a monster. To this end, she not only painstakingly found a secluded place, but also locked all the exits and planted time bombs nearby. She also wrote a timed message for the police department. In the end, she made a great effort to recite the evil god's prayer, and Cat Whiskers showed it to her.
In the "Team" interface, the system even set up buttons such as "Administrator", "Team Level", "Unfinished Tasks" and "Chat" in a very serious manner. Messages kept popping up in the "Chat" section. Shen Xijing enthusiastically typed long paragraphs of text to tell her recent stories. Qin Xinhong's eyes twitched as she read it. She felt that her old friends were not so much addicted to a cult, but rather to some kind of online game with a very old-fashioned UI design.
She couldn't resist picking up the detection gun and firing it into her head. Only after confirming that what she was seeing wasn't some absurd hallucination did she continue reading. Her brows furrowed slightly as she learned about the changes in the pirate crew during her absence. Finally, she couldn't resist testing herself again with the detection gun.
"Beep—Your mental energy fluctuations are normal."
The mechanical voice delivered the test results as usual, but it offered Qin Xinhong no comfort. Even after confirming them countless times, she couldn't help but send them one more time:
[Call Me Sister Hong (Cat Beard Pirates)]: "You really killed Bian Shaoyan?"
[(Cat Whiskers Pirate Crew) Quiet Doesn't Want to Be Quiet]: "That's right! But we also have the help of the church and other teams."
Qin Xinhong took a deep breath. The composure she had cultivated over the years, having faced life and death on the brink of death, was fading away, to the point that she was somewhat dazed. Human life was worthless in the lower district. A week had passed since the busiest red-light bar, with new singers on stage and new listeners in the audience.
However, the fate of the chaebols is clearly not among them.
Qin Xinhong looked at the message that popped up on the screen and couldn't help but pinch herself. Even though rumors were flying all over the lower district, there were still many people who didn't believe it... But she took a huge risk to read the prayer on the note, wasn't it to verify this?
Qin Xinhong, as if possessed, flipped through the message record four or five times. His surprise and bewilderment disappeared without him noticing. The old hunter trembled, and excitement climbed up his spine to the back of his neck, igniting his eyes that had been shrouded in a layer of gloom.
[Call me Sister Hong (Cat Whiskers Pirates)]: "...Well done."
"Hehe, Sister Hong praised us!"
Shen Xijing jumped up excitedly, almost shaking the cow cat off her shoulder. She hurriedly tried to catch the cat, and unsurprisingly received a speechless look in return.
"It's not that Sister Hong has never praised me before, I just got happy for a moment..."
Shen Xijing scratched her head, as if she had thought of something, and asked, "Wait, Sister Hong has entered the 'team' channel. Does that mean she has finally joined us? That's great!"
The predominantly black tuxedo cat gracefully jumped onto the table, pondered for a moment upon hearing this, and a look of realization appeared in its eyes.
Without the protection of civilization, the mist is fraught with danger. As long as they can pass the test, most mist hunters will choose to join the Hunter Guild. Even those who are not strong enough to join a large guild will often join a small guild to stick together for warmth. Only Qin Xinhong is an exception.
She was not only a lone wolf, but also an extremely capable one, having refused offers from two major hunter guilds. Catbeard had some personal ties with Qin Xinhong due to past events, making the pirate crew the only one that hadn't invited this powerful lone wolf.
Faced with the same situation, some people choose to escape, while others, regardless of the outcome, choose to face it alone. However, the unpredictable clock of fate will not stop turning because some people escape. After many twists and turns, she and Qin Xinhong seem to have returned to the starting point, and they are standing together at a similar crossroads again.
The black and white cat perched on the table remained silent. Shen Xijing nudged the edge of the table with one hand, while tentatively reaching for the fluffy cat's head with the other. Hesitating whether to comfort the leader, who was lost in unknown emotions, her hand was ruthlessly slapped away by a claw. An excited voice came from ahead:
"Hahahaha, so now she has to call me commander?"
Shen Xijing looked at the cat emitting a strange laugh, rubbed the back of her hand, and felt a strange feeling welling up in her heart. Was the leader's focus a little off...?
"Finally, there's some activity at the docks?"
While eating, Du Yu suddenly had a thought. The forum interface popped up automatically, and he received an unread message in the administrator section. It was from Shen Xijing, who had just learned the latest news about the City of the Sun from Qin Xinhong.
Since Du Yu disrupted the sacrifice of [Mi Mi Yin], the bald-headed gang members stationed at the Furensa Wharf seemed to have noticed nothing. Everything in the mine was normal, except that the mine was closed after that, and no one was allowed to enter or leave.
According to the message from Qin Xinhong, the Gentlemen's Club has finally made a move—posting recruitment notices everywhere, hiring people to mine in the mines, with not only generous benefits but also no limit on the number of people.
...It just so happens that right after Bian Shaoyan died, Du Yuke didn't forget that while the bald man was having an ambiguous relationship with [Mimi Yin], he was also colluding with people from Quark Pharmaceuticals, playing both sides.
Du Yu ate a couple of bites of rice with interest, his gaze falling on the newly added user ID on the forum, where he directly saw the user's real information.
Qin Xinhong.
Du Yu was familiar with this name. With a crackdown underway in the lower city, Cat Beard and the others couldn't leave this area for the time being, so they spent 100 points to buy a message relay service in the "Exchange" area. She sensed Qin Xinhong's prayer the moment it was read.
Of course, more importantly, compared to Cat Beard and the others who didn't have much screen time, Qin Xinhong did appear in the original text!
Although she was merely a tool to advance the romance between the male and female leads, she angrily self-destructed after failing to assassinate Bian Shaoyan. The impact of the self-destruction of a top-tier A-level ability user directly pierced through Bian Shaoyan's layers of protection, making this the closest Bian Shaoyan came to death in the early part of the novel.
But at this critical moment, Gu Tu, who had run away from home after arguing with Bian Shaoyan, arrived just in time and even awakened a healing ability, easily resolving the crisis.
In the novel, the scene of him chasing her and running away was staged many times. Every time the two were struggling, there would always be cannon fodder rushing in to create various conflicts. Du Yu had a deep impression of Qin Xinhong because she was the most inexplicable cannon fodder in the book.
Without any motive, psychological description, or foreshadowing, this person seems to have suddenly appeared beside Bian Shaoyan, and then self-destructed without warning after the failure. There was not even any investigation or revenge by Bian Shaoyan afterward. The entire assassination, which was clearly the highlight moment when the protagonist Gu Tu awakened her superpower, was just glossed over so hastily. When Du Yu watched it for the first time, he even suspected that this part had been cut.
But with the end of the world already upon us, it's already quite an achievement for her to find even this one copy. It's impossible for her to find the author, "The Reader," to ask her if this passage had been cut.
Now, thanks to her efforts as a "butterfly," the original novel has changed a lot. Cat Beard and the others didn't die in that deep dream, You Shi didn't get what he wanted from [Lost Heart and Eyes], and Bian Shaoyan died early...
Wait a minute, Du Yu paused in his chewing, and a purple flame suddenly flickered in his eyes. It was as if a door had been suddenly opened in the depths of his memory, and a problem that he had subconsciously ignored in the past was finally exposed.
If Gu Tu only awakened her special ability at that time, then why was the original body stripped of its special ability?
She remembered very clearly that the male protagonist of the novel, Bian Shaoyan, had the trait of "equivalence balance"... but why couldn't she remember Gu Tu's trait?
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